Wednesday, November 03, 2004

The case for fraud (UPDATED)

Ignore the rightist snickers. Ignore those who would straightjacket permissible thought. We have a right to ask difficult questions.

And the question of the moment concerns exit polls and electronic voting.

Some have criticized my pessimistic attitude toward this election, but I always heeded the warnings sounded by Bev Harris and others regarding the danger of computerized vote tampering. If Kerry did not win handily, he could not win at all. A truly lopsided vote would have been impossible to hide, because oversized gaps between polls and election night counts would prove too suspicious.

Although the vote was tight, such gaps nevertheless exists. And although those gaps were not massive, the pattern is suspicious. Very suspicious.

Remember when networks used to trumpet the accuracy of exit polling? Last night, on-air talking heads (especially on CNN) loudly derided these same exit polls as untrustworthy. Perhaps polling methodology has become sloppy. Perhaps respondents have learned to enjoy fibbing to pollsters.

Or perhaps something in our current vote-tabulation system is fishier than an all-you-can-eat sushi bar.

Before proceeding, recall the commonly-heard axiom that Democrats tend to vote late, while Republicans tend to vote early. Many challenge that belief. Still, keep the notion in mind as you read what follows.

Exit polls published yesterday afternoon (by Slate and a number of blogs) gave this portrait of certain key results:

At times, the poll data was even more favorable to Kerry in these three key states. See, for example, this screen capture of CNN data in Ohio. No exit poll showed a Bush lead in any of these states.

Here we find grounds for suspicion. Electronic voting machines figured heavily in the final tabulation of the results in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico. Moreover, in all three, paper audit trails do not exist.

These states therefore offered the best, safest opportunity for manipulation of the final count.

Question 1: Even if we grant the potential inaccuracy of exit polls, how likely is it that in all three cases the inaccuracy would show a "false positive" working toward the Democratic advantage? Why doesn't the disparity ever work in the other direction?

Question 2: Why did problems afflict exit polling in three swing states that have widespread computerized voting with no paper trails?

In other states, where recounts are easier to accomplish, the exit polling matched the final results rather well. In Nevada, Illinois, and New Hampshire, computer votes do have paper trails -- and in those instances, the exit polls mirrored the final totals.

To recap: In three states with no paper trails, we have exit poll/final tally disagreement. In three states with paper trails, we have exit poll/final tally congruence.

Coincidence?

Let's return to the notion that Republicans vote earlier than Democrats. Many dispute that bit of folk wisdom. Even so, is it likely that the people waiting four, five or more hours in long lines, well into the cold of the night, underwent this endurance test to demand more of the same? Shouldn't the polls have showed Kerry's lead expanding as the night went on, instead of evaporating?

Intriguingly, CNN's exit poll results underwent a mysterious revision not explained by an increased number of respondents.

Black Box Voting plans to file the world's largest FOIA request to uncover the internals of the compu-vote. Don't presume that such an inquest will come up goose eggs:

Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; "trouble slips" revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.

Today's Boston Globe expands on some of the points I've made here:

Although some of John F. Kerry's leads in the state exit polls narrowed during the course of the day yesterday, there was a significant discrepancy between the actual vote total and the polling numbers, particularly in two states believed to be keys to the outcome.

While the exit data had Kerry winning Florida and Ohio by a narrow margin, the actual tabulated vote late last night had Bush carrying Florida by about five points and winning Ohio by two. In addition, a projected Kerry win of about five points in Wisconsin turned into a very tight contest, and what was projected as a close race in North Carolina turned into a double-digit win for Bush.

Again: Note the pattern. Why do exit polls always go wrong in the same way? Pundits who assail these polls never address this question.

Logic tells us that about half the exit polls would show false positives for the Republican side. But in the past two presidential elections, they have almost always (perhaps I should strike out the word "almost") delivered false positives for Democrats, and Democrats only.

The simplest explanation: The Democratic false positives are not, in fact, false. The computerized tally is false.

Remember: If malign parties have tampered with the electronic result, then our first, best -- and perhaps only -- indication of fraud will be a conflict between the exit poll data and the "official" results.

A pattern of false positives functions much like a canary in a coal mine. It's a warning. Something is wrong.

Another burning question is surfacing: if this was such a record turnaround, with long lines all over the country, where did all the votes go? Because the vote totals don't show much of a difference from the 2000 election. It's as if a few million votes just vanished...

And from the good folks at the Raw Story:

In Wisconsin, where exit polls put Kerry up seven percent, Bush has a lead of one percent, an unexplained difference of eight percent.

In New Mexico, Kerry led Bush by 3.8 percent, yet Bush leads Kerry by 3 percent in actual reported voting.

In Minnesota, where a new law sharply restricts reporters’ access to polls, Kerry led 9.6 percent in exit polling. Actual voting counts found that Bush trailed by 5 percent, with a 5 percent discrepancy favoring Bush.

Ohio, which does have paper trail capability but does not mandate receipts, had exits showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat; in the near-final results, Bush led by three percent.

Exit polls put Kerry up by 8 percent in Michigan; actual results show Bush trailing by just 3 percent.

Two states with mandated paper trails for electronic voting were within 0.1 percent margin of error.

Finally, at the Murdochian New York Post, Dick Morris notes the astounding coincidence of Democratic false positives -- and implies that they prove a liberal conspiracy! This is not, of course, the first time Dick has suffered from foot-in-mouth syndrome.

I keep saying we can start small and mount an investigation of the Bush administration's practice of cheating and fraud. I keep noting that the Watergate investigation started small and ended up with impeachment proceedings and the resignation of a President

And I keep hearing back that no one in Congress would be willing to impeach George W. Bush.

Listen up! No one would have believed in 1973 that Nixon could be driven from office either.

Today Bush says he has a mandate. If that idea doesn't put resolve in your heart nothing will. A mandate? Bush thinks now he can do ANYTHING?

We are not powerless. We are not ignorant slaves of an oppressor. Bloggers are powerful people and we know powerful people. Let's fucking get started today! We've dicked around long enough.

There are people out there who have information about the Bush fraud...all of the Bush frauds. Speak up! There are people out there who know important people...find them! Get information!

The aim is to get the goods we need to empower an investigation that will reveal the illegal activities of the Bush administration in no uncertain terms. There are Republicans who are scared to death of what their party of choice is up to...they want to blow the whistle. Let's find them!

Bush thinks he has a mandate? He doesn't know from mandate. Bloggers have a mandate to unseat the BushMen. Bush thinks he has missionary zeal? He doesn't know missionary zeal. Wait til he sees what we can do!

This CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/11/03/electronic.voting.ap/index.html) says that

1) A voter had to try about ten times to get the machine to correctly take her vote for Kerry instead of Bush.2) The machine's manufacturer says the screens need to be periodically "recalibrated."3) The pollworkers are supposedly trained to do so when a voter tells them that it's not working properly.4) This system is "better" than paper ballots because the voter has two chances to make sure their vote is correct before submitting it.

so that raises a few questions....

5) Are the uncalibrated machine's "defaulting" to Bush? If the names had been reversed, would the default vote have gone to Kerry? Exactly what DOES happen with an uncalibrated machine?6) How many voters do you suppose just blew right past the confirmation screen, assuming it was already correct. Why in the hell should they need two (or ten) chances to get the machine to take their vote correctly??7) How many votes were misread, on average, before an alert voter got a poll-worker to recalibrate each machine?8) How exactly is it "better" to have a second chance to correct a machine's error. Correcting your own error is a different matter.9) Can the machines in the paperless states be impounded so as to preserve their current state, before their logs and calibration status get destroyed?

10) Can the exit-polling people please explain how their errors are so far lopsided in the same direction, only in those district's with no paper-trail?

posted by Anonymous : 1:04 AM

Don’t get me wrong, I am terribly suspicious of the voting machines that don’t provide a paper trail and the differences between the exits and the final numbers make me worry . . . but, I need to point out that an accusation here doesn’t fit with the data. Specifically, the suggestion that there was a 5-point swing for Bush in states with no paper ballot compared to states with a paper trail doesn’t seem right. Using the exits posted at Slate.com, there was an average error in the exits that gave Kerry 4.1 more points than he got in the final counts (taken from CNN.com). The post above argues that the exits were accurate in three states that have a paper trail, Nevada, Illinois, and New Hampshire. Based on the Slate.com exits and the CNN.com final numbers, Nevada numbers were pretty far off, with a 3 point gain by Bush comparing the final numbers to the exits and a 1 point loss for Kerry (the exits had it 48-49 Bush-Kerry and the final had it 51-48). For New Hampshire, the exits were also inaccurate, giving Bush 44% when he actually got 49% (Kerry had 54% in the exits and got only 50% in reality). Illinois wasn’t given in the Slate.com exits.

Like I said above, I am suspicious about the differences in the exits and the real numbers, but I don’t see any more accuracy in states with a paper trail. It just seems like the exits favored Kerry uniformly (with one exception: the Arkansas exits from Slate.com were exactly right).

posted by Anonymous : 2:21 AM

There is probably going to be alot of conflicting data being thrown around at this moment. I dont know if the poster above is correct or not, but I would imaging a link to the exit polls and final tallies should cover that.

This is going to be very hard. The system has been setup to not know anything for sure.

And lets not count on the media....

posted by Anonymous : 2:36 AM

From the Washington post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23756-2004Nov3.html

"But while network anchors and pundits told viewers again and again that they were being cautious in their projections, some were clearly misled by early exit polling that seemed to point to a Kerry victory. "Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong or George Bush loses," Fox commentator Susan Estrich said early in the evening.

The exit surveys "confirmed what a lot of people suspected already, that Kerry was going to win," said CNN commentator Tucker Carlson. He said he was "shocked" when he heard from a Democratic operative about 10 p.m. that the Kerry camp was preparing for the possibility of losing Florida and Ohio.

The exit polls were "totally useless," Carlson said. "In fact, they may be counterproductive." "

The slate.com numbers are available here: http://www.slate.com/id/2109053/

The cnn.com final numbers are here:http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/president

On average, the difference between the final numbers give a 4.1 point advantage to Bush compared to the exits (average underestimate of 2.31 for Bush's numbers and an average overestimation of 1.8 for Kerry's numbers; the standard errors for these means were 0.30 points for Bush and 0.32 for Kerry, so the differences are certainly statistically significant). These means include the accurate exit numbers for Arkansas.

posted by Anonymous : 2:45 AM

Wash post again:

"

"I don't know a single journalist who voted for Bush, not one," said Carlson, a conservative commentator. "The consensus in journalism is that he is not a good president." But ideology aside, Carlson said, "new is always better -- new story, new sources. Maybe an easier time getting through to significant people in the White House."

USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro sees a more fundamental problem. "We're really worried that the message will be that total lack of access, message discipline and information processed through the blandest possible official spokesmen is the way to get reelected and succeed in American politics. I worry about a second-term climate of even more secrecy."

Exit polls are conducted like this: the pollsters select a sample of polling places, put somebody 100 feet from the poll who asks people who they voted for on the way out. The numbers on CNN.com are not exit results, but are official numbers reported from the voting precincts.

It would seem that the post at the top of this page was wrong when suggesting that the exits were different from the real votes only in states where there wasn’t a paper trail. What is clear is that the exit polls had a generalized overestimation of Kerry’s votes and an underestimation of Bush’s votes. The difference in the errors was statistically different. Had the differences been random, the errors for Kerry and Bush would have averaged to 0 and would not have been statistically significant.

The reason for this generalized overestimation of Kerry’s votes is still in question. Was this error because the exit pollsters picked democratic areas to run the exit polls? Was it because those voting for Bush were less likely to answer the pollster? Or, like suggested above, was it because the voting record had been tampered with at some point to move votes from Kerry to Bush? This is a serious charge that certainly requires more investigation, but, based on these numbers alone there is no evidence that the error is limited to polling locations that don’t have a paper trail.

posted by Anonymous : 3:32 AM

Math doesnt lie.

Statistically it should have been about 0.

Its not, certainly yes, we have a question here.

Is it possible that they claimed to have made many changes which could have affected these results?

This 'flatline' thing on the e-voting machines also makes me wonder.

All it takes is a wink and nod and you can basically pick and choose which machines to knock out.

By the way, there is alot of nasty information regarding the manufacturer of those machines. In a technical sense (I am a computer engineer) all of the tampering presented is possible.

Also, the most suspicious piece of evidence is the lack of a paper trail. I mean, that is ripe for abuse.

Every computer system I have ever programmed has included some variation of logging, auditing, archiving.

I cant think of a computers system that is not designed to audit itself. How do you investigate bugs? How do you ensure accuracy?

In addition... the touch screens, they can be extremely easy to manipulate. Basically 'bush' or 'kerry' gets a range of pixels on the screen. If the selection is within that range, that candidate is chosen.

It would be very simple to make a subroutine which (to the tabulation) makes kerry vote = bush vote. This could also easily be done randomly, say, one of every 100 kerry votes. The user on the screen would never know the difference. You can report one thing to the system, another one to the voter... easy as pie.

And it can even be done remotely... so the snake oil would never even be on the voting machines.

I am still shocked the nation let these sorts of voting machines be used.

"But conspiracy theorists really latched onto John Kerry's promising exit-poll numbers. Just months ago, there was a lot of controversy over whether exit polls revealed election fraud in Venezuela. Is it possible that American exit polls weren't wrong, but, rather, exposed that Kerry's early afternoon advantages had been erased by a GOP-friendly hacker? "

LamontCranstonAnyone know what Hunter S. Thompson’s response to this is? I know he called it for Kerry, and has been a friend of his for a long time, and he hasn't been wrong once in all his years of calling elections. He’s gotta be pretty pissed (figuratively and literally) that’s for sure.Now I'm going back to making a beast of myself.

posted by Anonymous : 7:44 AM

Check www.electoral-vote.com Scroll below the map. The webmaster has some comments on this issue. He notes that only 5 votes per machine can probably swing an election. And he also has a link to a reasonable machine-vote system.Someone reading this has the time and inclination to do a thorough analysis of this possible fraud! Get busy! Our Democracy (sic!) really IS in the balance!

It's so sad that you morons have to resort to this kind of crap. Arguing fraud in the vote count because its not consistent with exit polls? give me a break, and accept the fact that you liberals are now the minority.

Getting back to the statistical argument and the comment that math doesn’t lie: you are right, math doesn’t lie. The exits were certainly more kind to Kerry than to Bush. This is a fact that nobody disputes. But, you have to be careful when interpreting why this happened. Yes, these data are consistent with a widespread conspiracy to defraud the country by giving more votes to Bush than he received. It also could have happened if people who voted for Bush were, for whatever reason, less likely to tell an exit pollster who the voted for. Maybe Bush supporters were less proud of their votes than Kerry supporters. That would have skewed the exits toward Kerry. What about the fact that the exit polls were conducted earlier in the day? It has been true in the past that democrats vote earlier in the day. It is easy to imagine that the exits sampled people who voted earlier and didn’t include late votes. This could have shown Kerry ahead when late voters were more likely to vote for Bush and put him ahead eventually.

Basically, the math doesn’t lie because it doesn’t say anything. I thought it was important to point out that the error in the exit polls wasn’t random (in which case it would have been a wash), but in no way did I want to imply a systematic effort to fraudulently increase Bush’s votes. I voted for Kerry and would have loved for him to win, but it’s over now and we need to move on.

Look on the bright side: with this guy in office and the NRA in his pocket, guns will be cheap and plentiful enough for us to buy a ton of them for our Blue-State-revolution. It certainly seems like a good time for another civil war. Anyone want to join me?

posted by Anonymous : 3:41 PM

It seems to me that the kicker is that exit polls were within the margin of error in states that had auditable voting systems. The fact that these polls were only off in districts that used unpublished, unsecured tabulation software leads me to suspect that the differential is more likely expained by manipulation of the tabulation.

Remember back to 2002. Max Cleland held a double digit lead in opinion polls on the day of his re election bid. Keep in mind that the entire state uses no paper trail electionic voting and tabulation. When the results were released, lo and behold, he lost his lead overnight and lost the election. I suppose it's possible that those who responded to the pollsters were embarrassed to admit they supported Cleland's opponent (a reason given by Sivers and Scarborough for the disparity this year in Ohio), but I think it unlikely.

That was the dry run. Ohio and Florida was the application on a wider scale. Fact: News organizations had to go to court in order to conduct any exit polling at all in Ohio. The Secretary of State tried to eliminate all exit polling this year. Why would he try to do that?

Face it....until these no paper trail systems are eliminated, Republicans will continue to win elections where they are used. If their use spreads to other states, anomolous returns will do likewise. Welcome to one party rule. Perhaps soon, instead of taking a loyalty oath to George Bush in order to attend a rally, we'll be required to take one to start the day.

Welcome to Germany 1930.

posted by Anonymous : 9:36 PM

Well written, Lou.

As I believe you may know, but your readers may not, I've been carrying *tons* of this stuff over on The BRAD BLOG (www.BradBlog.com)

Including, amongst much other stuff, the late breaking news that House Dems have now requested an urgent investigation from the GAO on all of this.

More on it all over there. Keep up the good work!!! The story is getting out, getting traction in the media finally, and -- I'm told -- amongst high level folks. So keep up the drumbeat!

Many of you are correct to be suspicious of those rigged exit polls, but your ideological blinkers prevent you from thinking clearly. Yes, in 2000, many states that Bush ended up winning by large margins (over 10 points) were "too close to call," while states Gore won by 2-5 points were called instantly for him. The effect was to create the impression of a massive Gore trend, which served to depress the Bush vote nationwide and particularly in Florida. So much for the myth of Gore's popular vote victory.In 2002, exit polls showed Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard losing by 10 points--he won by 8.This year, Pennsylvania, Kerry's by a 2 point margin, got called instantly. Southern states, won by Bush in landslides, were--you guessed it--too close to call.Yes, the rigging is always in the same direction. AND YOUR SIDE IS DOING IT!Michael Barone has explained the process of "slamming." Democratic operatives flood a polling place and offer to answer exit polls. This skews the result toward the Democrat and creates a bogus trend. There is no way a Republican gains from exit polls that show him losing.Your notion that the polls are trustworthy, but the raw vote--the actual data--is fake, is too pathetically stupid to comment on.

Oh ferheavensake pomeroo! Even if what you say is true, encouraging your voters to vote early and make sure to talk to any exit pollsters so that you look good in early exit poll results would be nothing more than a campaign strategy, and perfectly legal. If it actually got good results, I'm sure both parties would be doing it, as there's no reason not to.

It's absurd to suggest an ethical equivalence between a tactic like that and what we're talking about here on this thread, i.e. a conspiracy between the ruling party and manufacturers of the nation's electronic voting system to commit large-scale vote-rigging and throw a Presidential election. It's like comparing apples and asteroids.

If the e-vote-rigging charge is true, it transcends any partisan debate between right & left, Repub's & Dem's, conservative & liberal, war vs. antiwar, etc. It would become a matter of democracy vs. tyranny/theocracy/fascism at home -- take your pick for the 2nd term, but the point is if you're a reasonably intelligent Republican who is neither an Apocalypse-crazed fundamentalist, a power-crazed neoconservative, or a rich sociopath, and you truly believe in democracy and the ideals set out in the Constitution, then you should be as concerned about the possibility of e-vote rigging as any Democrat, because that threatens the nation's democracy itself, and the people perpetrating it are not traditional Republicans or conservatives at all, but rather a radical but powerful cult that has taken over and subverted the GOP for their own ends.

I remain agnostic on the e-vote-rigging question myself pending further data, but the case is not weak nor far-fetched -- in fact it keeps getting stronger. We know that Bush & Co. are certainly capable of doing such a thing if they thought they could get away with it, and both the major election machine makers (Diebold and ES&S) are run by right-wing Christian fundamentalists with high-level connections to both the Republican party and some of the scarier Christian group/movements of the far right, such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionists".

Google those terms, or look them up at disinfopedia.org, and you'll see that they refer to Christian groups or movements that are very active, very well-connected financially and politically, and very explicit in their call for the overthrow of democracy (which they see aas a failed project of evil secular humanism) in the USA in favour of a Christian theocracy, with laws based on a strict, regressive interpretation of the bible, including execution of homosexuals, women as subservient to men by God's design, no abortions and possible executions of those who perform or advise them or the woman herself. Some even argue that slavery should not be illegal, since it is found in the bible (or some such lame "reasoning").

But their main and most alarming belief and objective is that they must establish Christianity's dominion over the entire globe before our old friend Jesus H. Christ (Superstar) will see fit to come back here to kick off Armageddon, which although unpleasant and even dangerous, is the necessay precursor to a blissful eternity of lounging at God's side on a cloud playing a golden harp. Understood in this light, Bush's middle-east blunderings in Iraq and elsewhere start to make more sense, as the goal would be to mess things up in anticipation of taking over the entire region for Christ and America.

There must be intelligent, aware Republicans out there who are appalled by the direction Bush is taking and his increasingly blatant disregard for the most basic democratic freedoms! If so, please prepare to put aside your differences and join the fight to save America!

Again I stress that these issues should not continue to be framed as part of a partisan debate -- if true, they threaten the Republic itself at its very roots, and I am sure that many democracy-loving Republicans who voted for Bush would be as alarmed as anyone else by these things.

To any such Republicans reading this, quell your reflexive dismissal of the charges and take an objective look at some of the evidence. At the very least, you'll learn some things you probably didn't know about widespread and shockingly slack "oversights" of electoral procedures by Republican-appointed election officials, and the extensive and sadly entirely non-fictitious connections between the GOP power elite under Bush and some pretty scary, decidedly not-mainstream elements of the Christian right.

Consider: if you were a radical but wealthy and well-connected cult convinced that God wants you to take over the USA (and eventually the world) by anymeans necessary to bring about His divine plan for the end times, how would you do it? By direct revolutionary challenge? Infiltration of the entire army and police to throw a military coup? Creation of a 3rd party and pursuit of electoral victory? Those would all be very hard if not impossible to accomplish in a country as huge, diverse, and intolerant of any form of internal armed insurrection (e.g. Waco) as the USA.

By far the easiest way would be to infiltrate one of the existing two political parties, which alone have access to the wheel of state. The Republican party would be the natural choice for a cult of wealthy right-wing Christians, since that demographic profile might encounter some resistance in the Democratic party, and since the cult sprang from the ranks of politically-minded, rich, conservative, Christian fundamentalist white guys and would naturally have members throughout the Republican party.

Once the cult sets this goal and deliberately begins an effort to obtain leadership of the party, it wouldn't take too long climb to the top with a bottomless bank account, shrewd political advisors, deep inner connections to the most powerful members of the Republican elite, and a disciplined and focussed effort by the group. And from there, with the media already in largely in hand, it's the nation, and then the world.

My point being that this is not an inherently implausible scenario, and to the world outside the American right-wing spin bubble of the corporate media in the States, this is in fact quite a reasonable possibility entirely consistent with the record.

But consider the stout conservative Republicans who get their news from Fox and the local right-wing tabloid and talk radio, and voted reflexively for Bush, but are not terribly Christian or religious at all, are in fact downright libertarian, if not liberal, in their views on personal privacy and keeping the government (not to mention the church!) out of our lives, people who enjoy a cold beer, maybe even the odd joint, go to strip bars once in a while with the boys (or the girls), are totally fine with people who practice non-Christian religions -- how many of them even know about Bush's deep connections with the far Christian right, how substantial they are, or how radical and extreme an agenda they underlie? Not enough, it seems. And how many would agree with that agenda if they did know? Pretty darned few, I think.

If we take these matters seriously, it is a civic obligation to alert these people to the real possibility that we are in the midst of a far-right Christian fundamentalist coup which is set upon an agenda that most of us on the right and left would find horrific. It may be a false alarm, but given the stakes it is much better to be safe than to be sorry on matters like this.

Also the corporate media does not want to carry this information, so even if some smoking guns appear that strongly validate the vote-fraud / far-right-Christian-coup story, most Americans will hear nothing about it through the mainstream media. We're going to need to start talking more, speaking out, writing, putting up posters, distributing pamphlets, organizing events and demonstrations, direct-mailing -- with the broadcast media in corporate hands, we're back to pre-electronic organizing and communicating, now aided by the cell phone, fax, and Internet, and you know what -- it looks like fun! Much more rewarding for participants than a campaign revolving around media events and advertising.

Maybe the Dem's should boycott the corporate media entirely next election -- it would get more attention than anything they could do or say through the media, and would be a fitting response to the increasingly blatant Republican slant -- just refuse to validate such a worthless forum and decline to participate in their media game. It would actually draw more attention to the party and constitute a strong statement of principle (which voters like)….

There are far too many diligent, zealous democrats/liberals right now who are willing to "move on", as they did in 2000. I've given this matter some thought and I believe the problem is this: we are not inclined to sound like poor losers. We have this need to be honorable, respected members of society (which is a good thing) but we somehow feel that requires us to accept "defeat" with grace. For many of us, it is unthinkable that election tampering would happen here and we shy away from such accusations, not wanting to be "unreasonable" or cry babies grasping at straws.

I have been hampered by these ideals in the past and that's why I think it's an important obstacle to overcome if we are to wrest control from the corrupt and power-drunk GOP. In 2000 I comforted myself with the notion that 4 years of Bush would have to lead to a populist revolution of sorts, that such a spectacle would light a fire under the Democratic Party and as one disaster suceeded the next, I thought that I could just hold on because it was so obvious that most Americans were disgusted and finished with this reign of greed. The results of this election cannot be valid and I am grateful to those of you who know how to take the facts of the matter and spell it out for the rest of us - most tellingly that the exit poll "errors" only favored Kerry.

We cannot "move on". We must gather hard evidence, prove our case, and not only just oust the corrupt from office but prosecute them. Bush, Sr. skated through Iran Contra while Clinton was virtually tarred and feathered for some stupid blow jobs. Republicans fight to the death. We must now activate our representatives, take over their offices, if necessary, and clean this mess up. NOW!

posted by Anonymous : 3:19 PM

All of you terribly aggrieved lefties fail to explain why John Kerry and his people think the stuff you're spouting is total nonsense. There is no controversy over the vote totals because there are no anomalies. The election reflects effective efforts by both parties to mobilize their supporters. After the Republican Convention, Bush had a large lead. His faltering performance in the first debate cost him much of it. The last two weeks of the campaign showed a consistent Bush edge, ranging from 2 to 4 points. In other words, he led all the way since September, and ultimately, he won. Democrats screwed with the exit polls in 2000 and nearly won as a result. They appear to have done it again. The fantastic nonsense you people are inventing about the wild-eyed Christians behind supposedly rigged computerized voting machines--stop, take a deep breath, and try to grasp how insane all of this is. Buy a World Almanac and compare, county by county, the results of this election with the last one. The anomalies you're imagining ARE NOT THERE.

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